The Ordnance Survey Letters contain
the correspondence between fieldworkers and the Ordnance Survey Office
in Dublin during the compilation of the first Irish Ordnance
Survey Maps. The fieldworkers in County Clare included two of the
foremost Gaelic scholars of the day, John O’Donovan and Eugene Curry.
The Clare letters, written in 1839, record a great variety of antiquities
for inclusion in the maps as well as commentaries on parish and family
histories. The text given here is based on typescripts prepared in 1928
under the direction of Rev. M. Flanagan, who also compiled the abstracts
given at the beginning of each section. The introduction to the Letters
was prepared by Dr. William Nolan in 1997.